Best of 2013: Slow down, you're just in time

More is expected of us in ever-smaller amounts of time as we strive to keep our productivity at pace with unending advances in technology. We are expected to be connected to more people more often, be across more information and be contactable more of the time (if not all of the time).

If this isn't enough, we can easily become buried in more data than we can process and more sensory stimuli than we can register. In a manic social media environment, with overbearing communications technologies and an unhealthy obsession with efficiency, an even greater issue than heightened stress is the resulting sense of meaninglessness as things become measured not by their significance but by how much they cost in our most valuable currency — time.

Nowadays there seems little chance to thoroughly reflect on anything. No 'spare' minute can afford to be wasted — it must be filled with the 'convenient' use of our devices. And of course we end up feeling like we have less time.

'Our perception that we have 'no time' is one of the distinctive marks of modern Western culture,' said writer and broadcaster, Margaret Visser. How true this is.

When our minds have little opportunity for reflection or downtime, we can fall into the habit of simply reacting to life. Gone are pockets of unfilled time, rainy afternoon boredom or opportunities to daydream or consider the 'bigger picture' at length.

On my way home on the tram recently, I observed the scene around me. The only two passengers not entranced by their phones were a man and a woman of the baby-boomer age bracket. I watched as they made eye contact (which was in contrast to everybody else who remained oblivious to their surroundings) and joked about the failings of the myki system. They connected, however briefly — and it seemed to put them both at ease.

Meanwhile, the other passengers seemed to be entirely elsewhere, mentally. One woman did occasionally lift her eyes from her iPhone — but only to do something on her iPad.

Do we lose touch with those actually around us in the attempts to maintain the endless streams of second-rate contact electronic communication allows us? In effect, this would mean that our communications technologies result in less real communication between people.

Before Facebook, people would usually find out about engagements and births and job promotions directly from the person — or at least through a mutual friend. A person also had more time to digest such news before his or her mind was consumed by the next thing.

Psychology recognises that at a certain point, emotional and mental overstimulation leads to a sort of detachment and emotional numbness as the brain and central nervous system can only respond to so much. Is the bombardment of stories, information and communication allowed by modern society having the effect of desensitising us?

'All media of communications are clichés serving to enlarge man's scope of action, his patterns of associations and awareness,' said Marshall McLuhan in his book From Cliché to Archetype. 'These media create environments that numb our powers of attention by sheer pervasiveness.'

Take the Greek myth of Narcissus — a wood nymph who was obsessed with himself through his own reflection. The word Narcissus is from the Greek word narcosis — or, numbness. With enough dopamine hits from 'likes' on Facebook, and adrenalin spikes from sensationalised news stories, one's emotions can become blunted. That is, with the notable exception of general irritability borne of expecting one's real life to be as fast-paced as one's online one.

From a broader perspective, how many of us find the time to really consider the full implications of the daily (let alone hourly) news that passes through our consciousness? My generation seem more preoccupied with responding with lightweight, lightning-quick tweets than with deep reflection. Twitter, which demands an immediate response to a topic if the response is to be at all relevant, is one example of the way that some technologies have simply led to higher expectations of what one person is capable of.

Serious modern day problems such as climate change, asylum seekers and mental illness should engage our emotions and thoughts for longer than five minutes. Creative and powerful solutions happen through breakthroughs in deep thinking, not surface thinking and knee-jerk reactions.

One day, a friend of mine told me how he and his toddler daughter had spent their time together on the weekend: my friend browsing social media and websites on his smartphone, and his daughter next to him watching movies on her own child-friendly version of a laptop. I struggled to stop an involuntary look of alarm from creeping over my face.

I was disturbed. Not because he is an uncaring father — he's not — but at the thought that this might be a typical situation. It is true that his daughter will be using more technology than we can dream of by the time she's an adult, and he probably thought it best to get her familiar with it from a young age. But I felt worried for her generation. Not for fear they will be uncared for, but that they will grow up, ironically, disconnected.

I wonder how much of my friend and his daughter's time together that day was spent giving their attention to their gadgets rather than each other. Receiving some undivided attention is a need we all have — for children, it is particularly vital to their wellbeing.

As technology advances further, so too does the degree of mental or emotional disconnect possible between people in the same room — or even in the same bed. According to proponent of the Slow Movement and author of In Praise of Slow Carl Honoré, there is evidence that around one fifth of Americans now interrupt lovemaking to attend to their phones.

The significant advantages of technological advancement are, of course, easy to list. We all benefit from the ability to instantly communicate at a distance (particularly in an emergency), use global positioning systems, have our information stored on computer records for the various services we access, and discover mind-boggling amounts of information about our health from medical machinery. The list goes on.

But our individual and collective attention spans are at an all-time low. Which is no surprise, given that our brains are bombarded with potential distractions from the moment we wake up until the moment we plug our touch-screened lifeline into its charger at the end of the day.

While reading The Winter of Our Disconnect by Susan Maushart (an account of the six months her family spent 'unplugged' from technology), I decided to abandon Facebook and Twitter for one month. At first, I experienced withdrawals from my social media world. But it didn't take long before the cravings subsided and I began to feel a sense of calm, wellbeing and a deeper connection to my home, the things I was doing and the people I was with. It was an eye-opening experiment.

Since then, I've become more aware of the effect that social media has on my life — so that when I hit electronic communications overload, I know to take a breather.

This issue is one that arguably affects our problems, big and small, across the board. From mental health and politics, to family relationships and stress-related illness — not to mention spirituality. Henri Nouwen, Catholic priest and writer, once wrote: 'Somewhere we know that without a lonely place our lives are in danger. Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.'

Advocates of the Slow Movement challenge us to take control of our pace, to recognise that it is possible to choose to slow down. In the eyes of many, this emerging movement could not come soon enough.

I am making efforts to take the lead from this movement by simply taking time to pay closer attention to what is actually happening around me 'IRL' (that's cyber-speak for 'In Real Life'). Perhaps sit quietly in a park, or — as foreign as the concept may be — even choose to do nothing now and then. For a 20-something in this day and age, this is not an easy shift to make. But it's a worthwhile one.

I'm also encouraged by the words of artist William Wiley, who said: 'I wish I could have known earlier that you have all the time you'll need right up to the day you die.'

Human beings need time to ponder, switch off, unplug and simply breathe. Slowing down doesn't mean stopping (it is called the slow movement, after all). By all means, take action — but perhaps try taking your time, too.

Megan Graham is a Melbourne based writer, journalist and occasional blogger. She writes for Crosslight newspaper and Across website in her current role with the Uniting Church. Her work has appeared in Insights magazine and The Transit Lounge. Megan won the 2013 Margaret Dooley Award for Young Writers for the above essay. It was originally published on 10 September 2013.

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